


Will You Still Love Me?

by SlytherinTeam



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Hurt, Love, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinTeam/pseuds/SlytherinTeam
Summary: “Hot summer days, rock and rollThe way you'd play for me at your showAnd all the ways I got to knowYour pretty face and electric soul...Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul?” - Young & Beautiful, Lana Del ReyTy Lee recalls her most painful memory; betraying the woman she loved, for her own sake.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Kudos: 30





	Will You Still Love Me?

“Leave us alone.” Azula said to the guards in the sharpest tone she could muster. The two burly men immediately let go of Mai, who stood looking at the ground, her bangs covering her eyes. After a pause, she looked up and met Azula’s gaze head on. The fire princess furrowed her eyebrows in anger and shock. “I never expected this from you.” She told her former friend, now traitor.

Ty Lee stood off to the side, watching with a nauseating feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had her hands clasped together, clenching them nervously as her eyes darted back and forth, from Azula to Mai. It wasn’t that long ago that Ty Lee and Azula had shared their first kiss and had gone on to do even more after that. 

The daughter of nobility turned circus performer turned deadly chi-blocker and closest confidant of the fire princess, had been certain that the woman she served and over time, had grown to love, would take her rightful place on the fire throne and not long after, bring her plan for world domination to fruition. And she knew when that time came, that she would be by her side. 

Princess Azula had decided that social norms didn’t apply to her. Why should they, when she would be the one to rule the world and define its norms? Azula had already defied expectations by being stronger and more competent than her elder brother and by conquering an entire city with the help of two other young women at her side. 

Screw Sozin and his narrow ideas about romantic love. Azula and Ty Lee had decided that they would be a pair no matter what and that Mai would be their highest ranking official in their new world order. 

The princess would solve the problem of producing an heir at some later time. She needn’t worry herself over securing her distant future when the promise of her reign was looming just over the horizon. The present was to be enjoyed.

But the promise of a beautiful future filled with power, prestige and not least of all, love, had come crashing down for Ty Lee. The chi blocker, who could read moods and auras, had been in denial about her lover’s condition for months but she could no longer turn a blind eye to it now. Azula, fire princess and fire prodigy, was slowly falling apart.

The young woman, who was so physically strong and mentally sharp, still was not immune to the toll her quest for power was taking on her mental and emotional health. She was suffering from paranoia, delusions of grandeur, and instability.

Ty Lee knew her friend, her love, could not rule in such a condition and that her plans, their plans, which were just on the horizon, would also now slowly fall apart.

Mai’s betrayal, which Ty Lee had not expected either, solidified her fears and confirmed the fact that Azula’s undoing was just around the bend. 

“The thing I don’t understand is why. Why would you do it? You know the consequences.” Azula narrowed her eyes at the dagger-throwing bitch she had once called her friend.

“I guess you just don’t know people as well as you think you do.” The sullen girl responded. She may have not been a fire-bender but she sure knew how to burn people with her words and eyes alone. “You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you.” She confessed and readied her daggers for whatever onslaught was coming.

A deranged look plastered itself across the fire princess’s face. “No, you miscalculated! You should have feared me more!” She screamed and started getting into her lightning-bending stance.

It was at that moment that everything changed.

Ty Lee took a deep breath and jumped into the fray, right before the fighting commenced in earnest. She chi-blocked Azula, her princess, her best friend, her love. And just like that, the most beautiful, smartest, perfect girl in the world according to Ty Lee, let out a choked breath and fell to the ground.

Mai’s eyes widened in shock. Although she was not privy to the true nature of Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship, she knew that they were closer with each other than with her and so she did not expect, when push came to shove, for Ty Lee to side with her.

“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Ty Lee urged Mai.

Azula got up. “You’re both fools!” She shouted and then commanded the fire nation guards to send the two girls, both her former friends, and one her former lover, to prison.

What Azula and Mai both failed to realize, was Ty Lee’s true intentions. She did not stop Azula to save Mai. She stopped Azula to save her from herself. It was an act of sacrifice. It was her way of trying to put her lover out of her misery.

Ty Lee, Azula, Mai and Zuko had all grown up together, and were all like family. Despite the princess’s all consuming rage and thirst for power, Ty Lee knew that if she actually maimed or killed her childhood friend, or later her brother, that she would come to regret it and live with that scar for the rest of her life. Ty Lee knew that Azula had unhealed trauma and she wasn’t about to let the princess pour more salt into her wounds.

The choice Ty Lee made in that moment meant destroying her relationship with the only person she had ever loved, her fierce warrior princess, who unfortunately had become too fierce for her own good. 

In Azula’s mind, Ty Lee was a backstabber who wanted to seize the throne for herself, a girl who had merely pretended to love her so she could get close and then have the real thing she sought, power. Because Azula couldn’t fathom anybody not being obsessed by the idea of power. Yes, she could even imagine her sweet little circus girl succumbing to it.

As much as she loved the brave little acrobat, it would never occur to Azula that Ty Lee had her best interest at heart because Azula, thanks to growing up under Fire Lord Azulon, Fire Lord Ozai and the mother who called her a monster and abandoned her, had some serious trust issues. Everyone was a potential enemy in her book. Ty Lee’s apparent betrayal only confirmed that belief and broke the fire princess’s heart for even daring to give her what little love she had. Never again, she swore.

The fire princess could still remember the day she sought out her free-spirited friend, reconnecting with her after so many years. The girl had joined the circus and that was not something that impressed her at all. “I don’t think our parents sent us to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls so we would end up working at places like this.” She had remembered saying. Still, she looked forward to watching her show. 

She set the ring on fire. It was true, she needed to coerce Ty Lee into joining her. Like always, she needed to get what she wanted through manipulation and intimidation. That was Azula’s way; it was all she had ever known. But, she never would have let anything actually happen to the girl. If she had fallen, Azula would be there to extinguish the flames but still even after that, only a fool would not join her.

The former circus star also remembered the day Azula had asked her to join her in her mission, except Azula’ show of asking her to join nicely was just that, a show. The fire princess had really come to conscript her. Ty Lee knew that but still she tried, in her subtle way, to decline. Of course, that just emboldened Azula, who stayed for her show. 

When the princess set the ring on fire, Ty Lee, naturally, was scared and sweating profusely, but she knew in her heart that Azula would never let her fall into the fire and that knowledge kept her steady on the tightrope. Under a little pressure, she ended up giving the best performance of her life that night. She played it up too, teasing the princess with her eyes with each trick she did. 

Azula loved it, never forgetting how pretty Ty Lee’s face looked that night, with her stage makeup on and the glow from the flames beneath her. Not to mention, the performance itself was electric, exhilarating, intoxicating. If Ty Lee still refused to join her when she asked that night, then Azula would be more than happy to return the next night, and the night after, again and again, never tiring of her shows. 

The fire princess thought her circus girl had betrayed her, that she no longer loved her.

That wasn’t true. The free-spirited circus girl would always love her fierce fire princess, even when the hot-headed princess was stripped to the bone, having nothing left but her aching soul, the circus girl would love her, unconditionally. That was her way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
